BOTCHED ROOT CANAL TREATMENT LEAVES LOCAL PREGNANT LADY HOSPITALISED

• Experienced excruciating pain, infection and severe facial swelling which led to surgery and the unnecessary loss of two teeth.

• £18,000 received in compensation to pay for retreatment and any future treatment

Kyra Hussain, a 34-year-old homecare assistant from Slough, Berkshire, has won £18,000 in compensation from her local dentist with the help of specialist dental negligence solicitors, the Dental Law Partnership, after root canal treatment on the wrong tooth led to severe facial swelling and the need for surgery which left scarring on her neck. Unnecessary stress was also caused to Mrs Hussain because she was pregnant when going through this ordeal.

In 2014, Mrs Hussain was experiencing pain in her upper jaw so visited her local dentist Dr Uzma Nazeem of the Moonlight Dental Surgery in Slough. Following an examination, Dr Nazeem advised that she required root canal treatment on one tooth to fix the problem. He fitted a temporary filling and told Mrs Hussain to return the following week for the full treatment.

“I expected the temporary filling would stop the pain until my next appointment,” Mrs Hussain explained. “However, I was still in a lot of pain so told Dr Nazeem about this when I returned. He assured me the pain would subside as soon as the root canal treatment had been completed.”

When Mrs Hussain was still experiencing excruciating pain weeks later, she returned to the Moonlight Dental surgery desperate to resolve the problem. This time she saw a different dentist who warned her she may need further root canal treatment and prescribed a course of antibiotics for the pain.

Soon in pain again, Mrs Hussain booked an emergency appointment at a new dentist as her face had continued to swell. Her new dentist prescribed more antibiotics and said the root canal treatment had completely failed, she would therefore need either further root canal treatment or the tooth would need to be extracted completely.

“The antibiotics just weren’t working,” Mrs Hussain said. “I didn’t want to risk being in pain for longer, so after discussions with my new dentist decided to just have the tooth taken out.”
A few months after the tooth had been extracted the pain returned.

“I returned to the new dental practice, where the dentist was shocked by what he found,” Mrs Hussain said. “He told me I had a severe infection and that another one of my teeth needed to be extracted immediately to resolve the problem.”

I am quite a nervous patient, so was referred to a sepecialsit to have the tooth extracted under sedation.

“My mouth was so swollen it looked like I had a tennis ball stuck in my mouth,” Mrs Hussain recalls. “My five year old daughter hardly recognised me one day when I picked her up from school. She had to watch her mummy cry in pain which really upset her too, it caused a lot of stress for my family.”

“The referral took months, and then they refused to treat me because I was pregnant, I had to wait until I was in my second trimester, which was three months away, before surgery could be carried out. In the end my dentist had to refer me to Wexham hospital to have my tooth out.”

“I was so worried about how the operation was going to affect my baby, and my mood was very low,” Mrs Hussain said. “I was in so much pain while waiting for the operation and the infection kept flaring up, but all I could do was try and keep it at bay with antibiotics. I kept worrying that swallowing the infected discharge would hurt my baby.”

Even after Mrs Hussain’s second tooth extraction she continued to be in excruciating pain. A puss leaking abscess had formed in her upper right gum, her face had ballooned with infection and the pain was so bad she went to A&E at Slough’s Wexham Park Hospital.

In Dec 2016, a year after Mrs Hussain had first visited Dr Nazeem, she had to undergo further surgery to drain the abscess and remove granulation tissue from the site of the extraction.

At this point Mrs Hussain contacted the Dental Law Partnership. Dental records obtained showed the problems she had been experiencing were down to Dr Nazeem’s poor treatment. Shockingly, it became clear he had carried out root canal treatment on the wrong tooth, and even the root canal treatment he had performed was defective, causing infection in that tooth too.

“No wonder the problem lasted for so long,” Mrs Hussain said. “The root canal hadn’t even been carried out on the right tooth! I experienced so much suffering because of this, and the fact I had to go through it and have surgery when I was pregnant was horrible. I spent the majority of my pregnancy in pain, worrying about my teeth instead of enjoying planning for my baby.”

Christine Salter, of the Dental Law Partnership, commented: “If the dentist had carried out the proper treatment in the first place our client could have avoided a great deal of undue suffering and the loss of two teeth. We hope the compensation received goes some way towards paying for any future treatment.”

The Dental Law Partnership took on Mrs Hussain’s case in January 2015. The case was successfully settled in September 2016 when Dr Nazeem paid Mrs Hussain £18,000 in an out of court settlement. Dr Nazeem did not admit liability.